Shelves and support stands have traditionally been used for suspending food items in a microwave oven to promote cooking efficiency. Although cooking foods in a microwave oven is usually much quicker than conventional cooking, it still requires intermittent stirring and rotating of the food or possibly adding additional ingredients thereto during the cooking process. Because a microwave oven interior is generally small and deep, reaching into the microwave cooking chamber to stir food resting on a shelf can be cumbersome and awkward since very little vertical space is available between the food and the oven ceiling.
The present invention relates to a shelf slidably mounted to a telescoping track assembly which may be easily attached to the interior of the microwave oven. Accordingly, the shelf may be withdrawn from a microwave oven interior in a drawer like fashion to overcome the problems mentioned above. In addition, the device offers numerous advantages over the horizontally sliding metal rod support trays typically found in conventional thermal ovens in which two sides of the tray are received within integral grooves on opposing sides of the oven. The present invention including the slide track mechanism is removably attached to the microwave oven interior allowing a single assembly to be interchangeably used with an unlimited number of microwave ovens. Furthermore, the present invention allows the shelf to be slid completely out of the cooking chamber while being rigidly supported underneath by the telescoping track mechanism.